


Chemistry from Your Company

by tipsyrn



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, I promise it will get fluffy later, M/M, angst?? in my fic?? more likely than you think, but constructive criticism is always welcome!, i apologize for the angst, this is the first thing I've posted to this site so please be nice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26774917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tipsyrn/pseuds/tipsyrn
Summary: After Blue and Gansey survive a nasty car crash in the Pig, Blue is hospitalized with a severe concussion and a broken arm."“Stable,” Gansey answered, his voice small and not very Gansey-like at all. A nurse had come through the waiting room some twenty minutes ago to update him on Blue's condition, and Gansey had done his best to keep his composure while she used phrases like ‘severe head trauma’ and ‘potential brain damage.’ “They won’t let me see her yet. She’s…” He shook his head, clenching his hand into a fist."
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 32
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

Gansey had been staring blankly ahead at nothing for what felt like hours when he felt Ronan's hand clap his shoulder. Ronan was, as a rule, not a touchy-feely person, and yet Gansey felt himself lifted out of the hard plastic chair he'd been slouched in. Ronan hugged him fiercely, hand curling in the back of Gansey's polo. The gravity of what had happened barreled directly into Ronan the moment he'd heard Gansey's voice waver over the phone, his usual confidence slipping under the weight of the situation. 

“What's going on?” Ronan asked immediately, “Is she-?”

“Stable,” Gansey answered, his voice small and not very Gansey-like at all. A nurse had come through the waiting room some twenty minutes ago to update him on Blue's condition, and Gansey had done his best to keep his composure while she used phrases like ‘severe head trauma’ and ‘potential brain damage.’ “They won’t let me see her yet. She’s…” He shook his head, clenching his hand into a fist. He wished he could explain to Ronan how he blamed himself entirely. How he’d kept driving the Pig around, knowing full well that it didn’t have airbags. How he’d put himself and every one of them in danger. How he’d put Blue in danger. All for the sake of what? Gansey's mind started racing again, and he looked up into Ronan's face, lost. 

“It's not your fault,” Ronan told him firmly.

He'd always been able to read Gansey like a damn book. 

And all things considered, the crash hadn't been Gansey's fault by any means, but guilt still tugged at him. The feeling twisted in his gut, threatening to make him sick. He collapsed back down into the chair with a heavy sigh, his face sinking into his hands. “If there were airbags, she might have been fine,” he mumbled.

“And if that asshole hadn't run into your car, we wouldn't be worrying about any of this,” Ronan reminded him, taking up the seat next to Gansey. Ronan couldn't imagine that either of them would be going anywhere anytime soon. “Adam's on his way,” he commented after a moment of silence on Gansey's part. 

“Someone should call Maura,” Gansey responded, his voice raw. He couldn't do it. Not now. Not when he was already on the verge of shutting down completely. He'd barely been able to keep it together this long, and he wanted to be strong for Blue's sake if nothing else. 

“I'll handle it,” Ronan told him, and Gansey was reminded of just how grateful he was for his friendship with Ronan Lynch. It wouldn't be an easy call to make under the best of circumstances, and their situation couldn't be considered good under even the most generous of descriptions: Blue was seriously injured, nobody knew exactly how bad it was, and Maura Sargent was a good 600 miles away. Ronan had been called many nasty things in his life, but never a coward and never disloyal. 

Then a nurse was calling Gansey's name, and all thoughts that weren't Blue fled from his mind completely. 

//  
‘Blue would hate this,’ Gansey thought immediately upon entering the room. It’s sterile white walls seemed to him the complete antithesis of the bright, colorful places she normally occupied. Blue’s cast, violently pink and ending above her elbow, offered the only real bit of color. Blue would find it horrendous. He had sat in the waiting room for nearly three hours between the time that the ambulance had arrived at the hospital and the moment that the nurse had come to escort him to Blue’s room, and he had spent every moment wrestling with the complicated web of emotions he’d been left with after the commotion died down. The guilt found him most frequently, eating him inside out and leaving him hollow. 

Seeing Blue complicated things. 

She was sleeping now, her dark hair contrasting starkly with the white fabric of the pillow. They'd shaved some of it away to stitch up a nasty cut that a piece of flying glass must have slashed into her scalp. She looked better now. Pale, but better. It helped that she was no longer absolutely covered in the red of her own blood. That's what had scared Gansey the most in the first few moments after the crash. There had been so much blood, and he couldn't locate its source. Later on in the ambulance one of the EMTs had explained to him that head wounds always bled a lot. It felt like a lifetime ago.

He dragged his chair forward towards the bed until he was close enough to lean against the mattress. He took Blue’s left hand, carefully steering clear of her IV, and laced his fingers with hers, bending to kiss her forehead. 

The sight of her, cleaned up and resting, flooded Gansey with relief. He longed to crawl up into the hospital bed beside her and just put his arms around her until everything was fine again. Until the doctors cleared her to go home and Gansey called a cab because the Pig wasn’t even close to being in driving condition. Because Gansey didn’t think he ever wanted to get behind the wheel of a car again anyway. Blue looked delicate, which struck Gansey as profoundly wrong. He’d seen her vulnerable before, sure, but delicate? He didn't think anyone had ever described Blue Sargent as delicate ever before in her life. 

All in all, Gansey was just glad that he was being allowed in to see her. He'd hated the uncertainty of it all, the sitting and the waiting. The not knowing. He found it a lot easier to cope with the idea of an injured Blue when he could sit beside her and watch the steady rise and fall of her chest. Talking to her would help too, but he didn't dare wake her now. Sleeping meant healing, and Gansey very much prioritized Blue’s recovery above all else. He'd stay put as long as it took, for both Blue's sake and his own. Being near her kept him calm, and after everything that had happened, Blue deserved to wake up to a familiar face. 

Gansey wasn't sure when he fell asleep, but he dreamt of screeching tires and twisted metal.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue wakes up in the hospital. 
> 
> Boys are even more difficult when you have no memory of them.

Nothing felt right when Blue opened her eyes blearily. Her head hurt like hell, and her field of vision swam before her, only resolving itself when she forced her eyes to focus on the obnoxious pink of the cast that engulfed nearly her entire right arm. Blue had half a mind to be pissed off that she’d ended up with a neon pink cast, but due to the fact that she had no memory of how she’d come to break her arm in the first place, she figured that consulting her on the color of said cast hadn't been a priority. 

Her head hurt. 

Her head hurt, and she had a vague awareness of something touching her free--and, she hoped, much less pink--hand.

Blue’s eyes made the dizzying journey from one hand to the other, discovering, much to her surprise, that it wasn’t a something touching her hand, but rather a someone. A someone sporting an ostentatiously green polo and a rather disheveled head of hair. Blue carefully pried her hand away from his, feeling more disoriented than ever. She didn’t know how she’d broken her arm, she didn’t know why her brain felt like it would burst from her skull, and she certainly didn’t know why she was there in the first place. She was fairly certain that getting a cast put on didn’t require an IV. Perhaps most importantly, she didn't know who this boy was. Something about that felt terribly wrong. Blue didn't have any time to contemplate because green polo shirt mumbled softly to himself and began to raise his head. 

And, oh.

The enormous smile that erupted across his face nearly knocked Blue right out again. He looked so relieved. And she had no idea who he was. 

“Jesus, Blue…” he breathed out, running a hand back through his hair, probably with the intention of fixing it. He'd succeeded only in messing it up more. “We've been worried sick.” We? Blue didn't even know who this particular boy was. He'd spoken her name, so clearly he knew who she was. None of this fit what she remembered. She was missing something. He reached for her hand again. 

Blue reflexively drew her hand back. “I-I'm sorry…I just...I really don't know what's going on. Who are you?” Some part of her knew that the words would hurt him, but nothing could have prepared her for the look that fell over his face. He looked devastated. He looked like she'd stomped on his last hope of ever seeing the sun again. Not that Blue was in any shape to be doing any stomping. The feeling of helplessness overwhelmed her, and suddenly she didn't want to hear his response. She didn't think she could bear it. “Can you call the doctor? A nurse? Someone?” she asked him, her voice brittle, on the verge of breaking. 

Something in his expression shifted, and Blue got the distinct impression that he was barely clinging to his composure. “I… Yes, of course,” he said, seemingly caught between wanting to answer her first question and knowing that the answer he had to give would only leave her with more questions. He went to the wall beside her bed and pressed the nurse's call button. He fidgeted anxiously, unable to meet her eyes, staring down at his feet, at his...boat shoes? This situation only grew more and more confusing in Blue’s eyes. She was supposed to know who this boy was; she was sure of it. The only problem was that seemed to be all she was sure of. She also knew that something in her hated to see him hurting. 

“I’m so-” she began, only for him to look up at her right then, the exact same words on his lips. 

“No, I’m sorry,” he repeated, his posture straightening. He pressed his thumb to his lower lip and looked up to the ceiling before his eyes found hers again. “I’m Gansey.”

“Is that all?” she asked. He half opened his mouth to answer just as the nurse entered, looking a bit frazzled.

“Glad to see you awake, Ms. Sargent,” the nurse told Blue, smiling and taking a cursory look at her chart. “Mr. Gansey, I’m going to need you to leave the room.”

He nodded, his eyes lingering over Blue as he turned to leave the room. 

Gansey. His name was Gansey. And Blue couldn’t remember a single thing about him.


	3. Chapter 3

Ronan didn't want to talk about it, pretty adamantly refused to talk about it, and Gansey had been called away to the ICU before Adam arrived. He wouldn't want to bother Gansey anyway. This was probably harder on him than anyone else. But in the few short years they'd known each other, Adam had become something of a professional at bothering Ronan, so he poked and prodded at him until he grumbled a response. 

"Use your words."

Ronan huffed to himself before forcing himself to look over at his boyfriend. "It's pretty bad," he said, and the look on his face had Adam's heart dropping into his stomach. It took an awful lot to get Ronan upset, and he'd passed upset a long time ago. "If I hear the phrase 'potential brain damage' one more time…" he muttered, his hand curling into a fist on the armrest. 

"Hey," Adam said softly, carefully uncurling Ronan's hand and intertwining their fingers instead. "They're letting Gansey in to see her, so it must not be too bad," he reasoned, trying to keep himself calm just as much as Ronan. He'd been her friend first, after all. They'd been the only two competent people working on a group project in their sophomore year Spanish class. Friendships forged on mutual disdain for the ridiculously privileged tended to last. And theirs was no exception, only they'd both almost immediately gone and gotten themselves tangled up with two of the most privileged boys at the school. Nobody had been more surprised than Adam and Blue. 

"He's not holding up too well either," Ronan said, his voice gruff as he tried--and failed--to keep the emotion out of it. "Keeps blaming himself even though some asshole sped through a red light and ran head-on into the passenger side of the Pig." His face had twisted into an angry scowl, which he directed at a poster urging them to "Disinfect hands frequently!" 

Adam tried to imagine the state Gansey must be in. He got sympathy sniffles when Blue so much as had a mild cold. How high his anxiety must have reached, Adam couldn't even estimate. For a brief second, he could almost picture himself in Gansey's situation: Ronan somewhere behind that door with severe head trauma and half a dozen other health concerns. 

He gripped Ronan's hand a little tighter.

"Look, Blue is one of the strongest people I've ever met. If anyone is going to come out of this kicking and screaming, it's going to be her," he reasoned, trying to reassure himself and Ronan while wholeheartedly believing every word he said. 

Ronan sighed, his stormy attitude starting to blow over, revealing an expression more vulnerable than Adam had ever seen Ronan in public. "I know, it's just that…" His gaze swung up to the door as Gansey pushed it open with perhaps a little more force than necessary. Adam watched as all of the fight drained out of Gansey before his eyes. His confident posture vanished, and the way his shoulders slouched gave him the impression of being a foot short of his actual height. Gansey's feet carried him towards Adam and Ronan, but his blank expression exposed how utterly lost he felt. 

"Gansey?" Ronan tried.

Gansey just shook his head, a distant look on his face. Adam surged to his feet, guiding his best friend down into a chair. He looked positively ghostly. What the hell had happened back there? "Is she okay?" Adam demanded, trying not to sound too abrasive even as terror crushed the air out of his lungs, leaving everything inside of him aching. Evidently, Ronan felt the same way, if his white-knuckled grip on his chair's armrest was anything to go by. 

"Yes," Gansey answered, his voice measured, almost mechanical, and terribly unconvincing. Adam had known him for far too long not to understand the way Gansey's face molded into a neutral expression, the way his shoulders attempted to square themselves. Only he couldn't put on that mask right now. As tempting as it was to pretend like everything was just fine, nothing had been even in the ballpark of fine since this had all started hours ago. And they needed answers. 

“Gansey…” Adam pressed, painfully aware of how much Gansey was hurting while still desperate to know what was going on with Blue. “Is she okay?” he asked again, his voice a bit softer as he watched the way Gansey’s face began to crumble. 

“She’s awake, and talking, and everything,” Gansey told him with a wry smile, trying much too hard to keep his lower lip from trembling. It wasn't working. "It's just that…" He shook his head almost imperceptibly, suddenly beginning to blink much too fast. "She doesn't know who I am anymore?" 

"What?" Adam asked. That couldn't be right. Blue not knowing Gansey just didn't strike him as even remotely possible. They'd been dating for three and a half years now. They knew each other better than almost anyone else. "What do you mean she doesn't know who you are?"

"She looked me right in the face, and she asked me who I was. And she looked so scared. I mean, granted, if I were in her situation, I would be scared too, I guess I just…" Gansey trailed off, seeming to grow smaller and smaller where he sat. His posture couldn't have been further from how he held himself in his general life: always fit to speak at a Congressional banquet or to have his portrait taken. Yet here he was, sunk into his chair like a balloon sputtering out its last bits of air. 

Adam couldn't stand to see him like this. The horrible reality hit him that if Blue didn't remember Gansey--who she'd been dating for three and a half years and living with for more than a year--she most likely didn't remember Adam or Ronan either. He couldn't focus on that now, though. Gansey was sitting in front of him, looking like he was about ready to lay down and die. 

"When was the last time you ate?" Adam asked. 

Gansey answered with nothing but a baffled expression. How could he think about food now when his entire world had imploded? 

"Look. You've been here for at least a few hours, and you're no use to Blue if you starve yourself. If she just woke up, they're going to want to run some more tests and do scans and all that, so you probably can't go back in right away anyway. So I propose we go get some food and come back. Maybe we can bring her something if the hospital will let us. And then we can talk to her doctors and get some answers."

Gansey simply shook his head. "I can't leave her. What if something happens and she's all alone? Even if she doesn't know me…" He shook his head again, still playing those words over and over in his mind.

'I really don't know what's going on. Who are you?' 

"I really can't leave. What if something happens?" he asked, shaking himself free of his own thoughts.

"Fine, then I'm ordering us a pizza," Ronan announced, clapping Gansey on the back much more lightly than he would have under normal circumstances. He slid his phone out of his jeans. Ronan did have a heart after all. It was a closely guarded secret of his, even if they'd all discovered it years ago. 

Gansey leaned his head against the stiff back of the chair. Pizza was probably a good idea. Now that he really thought about it, he could feel the way his stomach gnawed at itself. He hadn’t eaten in hours, and he’d been too busy worrying about Blue’s wellbeing to even consider his needs. As Adam sat down between him and Ronan, he thought he probably wouldn’t have sought out food for at least another few hours if it hadn’t been for his friends. He turned his head to the side so he could look Adam in the face. “Thanks, man. I...There’s no way I could get through this without you guys. I’m an awful mess right now,” he said.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Adam deadpanned, raising his fist.

Gansey cracked a grin that found itself mirrored on Adam’s face as he lifted his own fist to bump against Adam’s. Every part of him still ached to know that Blue couldn’t place him in her memory, but at the very least, he had Adam and Ronan here to watch out for him. And there was no way they weren’t hurting too. 

The pizza came, and they devoured every last piece. Adam--who had been up at an atrociously early hour for work--was the first to nod off with one leg tucked up under him and his head lolled back against the chair. After all, it had been late when they brought Blue in to the hospital, and a few hours had ticked by since. Gansey's anxious thoughts kept him sitting awake only a bit longer than Ronan, who'd fitted his hand together with Adam's under the armrest between them before his head dropped onto his boyfriend's shoulder. Gansey just slumped back in his chair, both emotionally and physically exhausted after the night he'd had.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue finally gets some answers.

“Hmm?” Adam murmured, sitting up perfectly straight in his chair. For a brief, disorienting moment, he had forgotten where he was. It took him another few seconds to realize that what had woken him was his alarm announcing that it was time to get up for work. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be in today. 

Ronan stirred beside him, groaning as he felt the stiffness that had set in from sleeping in a waiting room chair. He squeezed Adam’s hand, knowing neither of them would return to sleep now. “Sleep well?” he asked, passing his free hand back over the top of his shaved head as he arranged himself into a more comfortable position. 

“Never better,” Adam told him, noticing that the receptionist was eyeing them. 

“You’re here for Ms. Sargent, aren’t you?” she asked, very politely not mentioning the fact that they had been asleep in her lobby for the last few hours. Adam nodded, his posture immediately more alert. “She’s allowed visitors. Would you like to go in and see her?”

Adam’s eyes shot to Gansey, still fast asleep in the seat beside him. 

“Go,” Ronan urged him softly. “I’ll keep an eye on him.” The last thing Gansey needed was to wake up alone in the waiting room. 

“You sure?” Adam asked, knowing that Ronan likely wanted to see her just as much as he did.

“I’ll be fine,” Ronan told him, easily reading the concern in Adam’s expression. “Go see her.”

//

Adam took a moment to steel himself before walking into Blue’s hospital room. Now he thought he understood some of Ronan’s reasoning for staying behind with Gansey. He wasn’t looking forward to one of his best friends not recognizing him. If she didn’t remember Gansey, there was no way she would remember Adam. Wouldn’t remember all the mutual pining they had done over Ronan and Gansey. Wouldn’t remember the late night rant sessions over Chinese takeout. Wouldn’t remember a moment of their four year long friendship. He took a deep breath. 

Blue fixed Adam with a baffled expression the moment he entered the room. “Adam?” 

Blue’s confusion only confused Adam even more. “You know who I am,” he said simply, a hint of disbelief in his voice. He was already overwhelmed by the fact that Blue was awake and alert enough to talk to him. She’d been in quite the accident from the sound of it. Adam had always thought of Blue as an incredibly strong person, but this was impressive even for her. 

She watched him with interest for a few long seconds before she responded. “Of course I know who you are. You sit next to me in Spanish.” She frowned, as if knowing that wasn’t quite right. 

And Adam could feel his head spinning. The semester they’d taken Spanish together had been four years ago. Adam had no idea how to handle this. The only thing that kept him from outwardly panicking was the fact that he knew Blue was most likely having an even harder time with this than he was. “The doctor told me I might have a hard time with my memory,” she told him, watching as he pressed his knuckles to his mouth, his eyes looking troubled as he tried to work out just how to handle this situation. She spoke again before he could decide. “Can you please just tell me what’s going on?” she asked, sounding a bit agitated. “The doctors can only explain so much, and they haven’t been able to get a hold of my mom. What am I missing?”

“It’s been four years since we had sophomore Spanish together,” Adam told her unequivocally. He knew that if he were in her situation, he would just want answers. “We’re not in school together anymore, but we’ve close friends since that class,” he told her, trying to ignore the awful sting of his best friend forgetting years of their friendship. At least he got this much. Blue remembered his name. Gansey hadn’t gotten half as much. Adam made a mental note to hug him when he saw him next.

“What’s my mom’s name?” Blue asked, her face impassive. 

“Maura?” Adam responded, caught off-guard. 

“What is my biggest pet peeve?”

“Entitled white boys,” he offered, grinning softly. 

Blue looked satisfied. “So I’ve graduated?” she asked him, attempting to gather information now that she had decided she trusted Adam. 

“Yes, two years ago.” 

“And we’ve been friends ever since?”

“Yes, long after we struggled through a million verb conjugations.” 

“Did you ever get with that goth guy from your English class?” Blue asked, a mischievous gleam in her eye. Even after everything she had been through, she was still Blue. That was for sure. 

Adam couldn’t help but laugh. This felt almost surreal. “Yes, I’m actually still dating him. We’ve been together about as long as….You two are good friends as well. He’s actually sitting out in the waiting area right now.”

“I’m friends with hot goth farmer boy?” Blue asked, seeming genuinely surprised that things had turned out this way. 

He truly didn’t understand how Blue had the energy for this, although he figured if he were in her situation, he would also be asking a million questions. “Maybe you should-”

“Who’s Gansey?” 

Adam was silent as he grappled with the answer to that question. One couldn’t easily define Gansey, nevertheless give an accurate impression of him to someone who had no memory of him to go off of. “That’s not…” He started to shake his head. 

“To me. Who is Gansey to me,” she pressed. Her previous conversation with Gansey must have left a strong impression. 

Adam knew it wouldn’t be fair to withhold the information from Blue. He knew even better that Blue wouldn’t let him. She’d get it out of him one way or another. There was no use in delaying it. “You and Gansey have been dating since the end of your sophomore year.”

Now it was Blue’s turn to be silent. She looked down at her hands where they were resting on the blanket covering her lap. “Three years?” she asked, as if checking her math. Only now, all of the teasing and the curiosity had gone out of her voice. She sounded hollowed out by this news. 

“Three and a half,” Adam told her, wishing desperately that there was something more he could offer her. Some other way he could help. It only made things worse that Blue’s mother remained several hundred miles away, and Adam couldn’t imagine any doctor in their right mind clearing her for travel anytime soon. If she didn’t remember Gansey, their shared apartment became problematic. He frowned. 

“What is it?” Blue asked, her voice betraying her anxiety over whatever it was that Adam had on his mind. 

“You live together,” he told her bluntly before proceeding to mop his hand over his face. He couldn’t tell if he was helping or making things worse. He simply wanted Blue to be prepared for whatever came next in this horribly chaotic situation they’d all found themselves in. 

Blue put her face in her hands--a rather difficult task, given that one of her arms was encased in a cast. She blew out a big breath, processing all of this information. She swore under her breath, causing Adam to lean forward. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

“No, it’s better I know,” Blue said, closing her eyes and leaning back against the pillows. “I just...I don’t know. I need to think.” 

Adam could see that she was trembling. He touched her shoulder lightly. “I know you might not remember all of us, but we’re all here for you, no matter what. Me, Ronan, and Gansey.”

She quirked a dark eyebrow at him. “Ronan?”

“My hot goth farmer boyfriend,” Adam told her, managing a grin despite the shitty situation. 

Blue gave him a tired smile. “Thanks, Adam.”

He nodded, wishing he’d had less difficult news for her. He could see that her burst of energy was waning. “I should probably let you get some rest, huh?” he asked. She still had a lot of healing to do, and the last thing he wanted was to impede that. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Just...You’re right. I should rest. Thank you...for not handling me with little-kid gloves.” She winced as she tried to adjust her position on the bed. “The doctors seem to think I’m fragile, and it’s driving me insane. So this has been…” She paused as if searching for the right word. “Refreshing. Startling, but refreshing.”

Adam rose from his seat, glad to know that his candor had done some good. “Anytime, Blue. I’m not going anywhere.” He started for the door. “Get some rest. I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”

She watched him go, speaking up only just as he was at the threshold. “Wait. Adam?”

He spun around to face her again, looking concerned. 

“He really cares about me, doesn’t he?” Blue asked, her expression making it obvious that even if she didn’t remember Gansey, she hated the idea of him suffering over this. Adam’s face softened. He wanted so badly to have the ability to impart to her just how much Gansey loved her. The way that his mood seemed to soar just after he’d seen her. The way he lit up whenever she entered a room. How he fretted over her whenever she was sick or injured, something Adam was sure he was doing in the waiting room at that very moment. 

“He really does,” Adam answered, knowing that his response didn’t even begin to cover the immensity of Gansey’s feelings for her. Blue nodded pensively, and Adam headed back out towards the waiting room, thinking it best to leave her to her thoughts.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gansey deals with returning to his apartment. Without Blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for your comments and kudos! It makes my day seeing people enjoy my work, and it also gets me excited about writing more! <3

“Gansey…”

“I told you, I’m fine,” Gansey asserted, sinking down in the passenger seat of Ronan’s car. Ronan glanced up, making eye contact with Adam in the rearview mirror. They both knew that Gansey was far from fine, but neither of them wanted to push him too far and make things worse. Blue was resting again, and Ronan had taken the opportunity to convince Gansey to eat and shower, even if his efforts to get Gansey to get some actual sleep had been fruitless. Gansey’s willingness to even leave the hospital had been entirely contingent upon Ronan’s promise that he would bring him back immediately after. He’d been taciturn and visibly somber since Adam had given his report of his conversation with Blue. 

When neither Ronan nor Adam ventured a response, Gansey sighed, rubbing at his irritated eyes. His first priority upon returning home would be to extract his contacts from his face, and quite possibly to throw them out the window. “Look, I obviously feel like shit,” he conceded, “and I know this isn’t easy for either of you. I just...It’s like she remembers right up until the moment we met. She remembers both of you to some extent, but I’m... I’m entirely lost to her.”

Adam put a hand on the back of Gansey’s seat, trying his best to give Gansey some comfort. “The doctors did say that-”

Gansey straightened himself out in his seat, frowning. “I know what the doctors said. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt now.” He’d heard it several times: that Blue’s amnesia likely wasn’t permanent. But they had no timeline on when she might start remembering, and the word likely wasn’t as convincing as he would have liked it to be. His head knew that Blue could make a full recovery and everything could go back to normal. His heart wasn’t quite so logical. And to top it all of, he was drowning in thoughts of Blue, alone in that hospital room, unable to remember the last few years, probably scared out of her mind, but undoubtedly not daring to show it. He wished he could sit by her side through all of this. He wished that his presence might offer her some comfort instead of the anxiety he’d so caused when she had opened her eyes to see him beside her. He wished a lot of things. 

He wished he didn’t have to return to their apartment without her. 

It ended up being a jacket that broke him.

On the way up the stairs, he had managed to convince himself that he was going to be okay. That he was going to simply go inside and take a nice, hot shower while Adam and Ronan ordered in lunch for the three of them. Then, he’d entered the apartment to see Blue’s jacket slung over the back of a chair in the living room. It was her favorite: a purple velvet bomber jacket. He’d gotten it for her for her birthday earlier that year after he’d seen it and it had absolutely screamed Blue. She’d been wearing it the night of the crash but had figured she wouldn’t need it, so she abandoned it as they were walking out the door. If Blue didn’t remember Gansey, she wouldn’t remember the jacket, or the apartment, or any of this. For the first time since his life had been thrown into chaos, Gansey felt in serious danger of crying. He’d pushed down all of his feelings in an attempt to feign normalcy, but as Gansey had come to learn, pushing down all of your feelings only tended to cause them to blow up back in your face. 

He headed straight for the bathroom and locked the door behind him. Immediately, he took out his contacts and flung them into the trash can before he sank down on the edge of the tub, finding it difficult to breathe as the tears finally began to fall. He reached behind him to turn on the water, hoping that Ronan and Adam wouldn’t hear him losing it in the next room. 

By the time Gansey emerged into the living room again, the food had already arrived. He’d dressed himself in a comfortable pair of joggers and a sweater, and he’d given up on contacts for the time being, donning his wire-rimmed glasses. Ronan and Adam very graciously did not draw attention to how red Gansey’s eyes were under said glasses. As it turned out, having a good cry had been cathartic for him. He still felt miserable, but at least his chest no longer felt pumped full of repressed emotions, fit to burst at any moment. He sighed, settling down on the couch and accepting a carton of chicken lo mein from Ronan. 

“Are you sure you want to head back right away?” Adam asked between bites of his eggroll. “It probably wouldn’t hurt to take a nap in your own bed while we’re here.” 

Gansey sighed and shook his head. Even if he could get to sleep, the last thing he wanted was to pass out and oversleep the hospital’s visiting hours, therefore losing his chance to see Blue at all that day. He wasn’t sure what sort of headspace Blue could possibly be in with everything that had happened, most of which she wouldn’t remember. But if she wanted him there, if his presence was useful or comforting to her even in the slightest, Gansey would be there. “No, no. I’ll try to get some sleep tonight,” he promised. “If you wouldn’t mind dropping me off here on your way home.” 

“We could stay over, if-” Ronan began to offer in a tone that almost seemed to be soft to be coming out of Ronan’s mouth. 

“No,” Gansey told him firmly, “You two deserve to go home and sleep in your own bed. I won’t have you neglecting yourselves on account of me.” He dreaded having to be alone in the apartment, and even worse, having to sleep there alone, knowing that Blue was in a hospital bed with no memory of him. That was his situation to deal with, not Ronan and Adam’s. They’d been through something awful as well, while simultaneously managing to prevent Gansey from spiralling too much. 

“Alright, but we’re coming to pick you up tomorrow morning then,” Adam said, the uncomfortable truth that Gansey wasn’t likely to be driving himself anywhere anytime soon hanging over them. Gansey acquiesced, knowing he didn’t have much choice in the matter. 

Noon had come and gone as they arrived back at the hospital.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue finally hears Gansey's side of the story. Yogurt is involved.

Blue had been resting since Adam left her room. Her headache had come back in full force, and her doctor had recommended she get as much sleep as possible to “help along the healing process.” Still, there was only so much sleeping she could do before her body refused to do so much as doze. With her phone MIA, and strong recommendations against looking at screens anyway, that only left Blue with one thing to do, which was to attempt not to drown herself in thoughts of what she’d forgotten. It wasn’t going well. The home that she remembered was with her mother, several hundred miles away. Her mother, who the hospital had still infuriatingly been unable to contact. She wanted her mother like she was a little kid again. Maybe, just maybe, Maura Sargent could make some sense out of this seemingly insurmountable mess she’d found herself in. 

Her conversation with Adam earlier that day had been helpful, but it had also triggered a whirlwind of emotions that had only let up when she’d entered into a narcotic induced sleep. She had a whole life that she couldn’t remember for the life of her. A whole friend group. A boyfriend. Apparently an apartment with said boyfriend. She felt like banging her head against the wall. Even if hitting her head had been what landed her in this hospital bed, with several years of missing memories. If reality wasn’t going to behave logically, then she didn’t want to either. 

She let out a frustrated huff and closed her eyes, dropping herself back onto the pillows, yelping softly as she realized the hard way just how sore she still felt. 

She opened her eyes to see someone standing in the doorway. More specifically, it was Gansey standing in the doorway, she realized after a disorienting moment. He looked softer today somehow. He’d changed out his astonishingly green polo for a subdued and very comfortable looking sweater. He was also wearing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and a concerned expression. She found herself thinking that the former suited him and wishing that she hadn’t provoked the latter. “Hi,” she said, sounding a little breathless. “I’m fine,” she added immediately, not wanting to cause him anymore distress than she was certain he was already feeling. 

He gave her a nervous grin as he sat himself down beside her bed. “Hi.”

Despite the fact that Blue didn’t remember this boy, that grin still felt incredibly endearing. She swallowed hard. “I talked to Adam earlier,” she said, looking down at her cast and scratching her arm where it ended just above her elbow. “Although, I guess he probably told you that.” 

Gansey nodded. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions.” He let out a shaky breath. Although Blue felt like absolute and utter garbage, she really did feel for him. He was undoubtedly attempting to put on a brave face for her, but Blue could see right through it. She didn’t know whether that was a feature of the gravity of the situation or if she had simply known him so well before that even now she could tell how he was really feeling. 

“I don’t even know where to start,” Blue told him, “I’ve just lost so much time. Maybe start at the beginning?” She didn’t know if this would help her remember, but either way, she wanted to know. It would be better to have gaps in her memory rather than a massive, gaping void. 

"Well, first off, I should tell you that my name's not really Gansey. Or rather my first name's not Gansey," he said. 

Oh, Blue thought, he really is taking it from the absolute beginning. At the very least, she appreciated his commitment. "I guess that makes sense. I was thinking that Gansey was a bit of a strange name."

Gansey smiled at her, although Blue could still sense a certain sadness in his expression. "My full name is Richard Campbell Gansey III." And to his credit, he seemed entirely unfazed by the face she pulled. 

"That name feels like it should have an 'esquire' after it," Blue pointed out, angling herself in her hospital bed so she could much better face him for this conversation. He laughed at that, her teasing seeming to put him moderately more at ease. 

"Not quite esquire, but when I was considering pursuing a PhD, we had extensive conversation about the fact that my name was already far too long to tolerate three more letters," Gansey told her, a smile still lingering on his face. She gathered that this sort of banter was a given in their relationship. She couldn't say she minded. 

"In that case, I'm happy to just call you Gansey," she told him resolutely, unable to keep a grin off of her face while he was smiling at her like that. This felt good. She'd spent the last couple of… Hours? Days? Time was starting to get away from her while she was stuck in this very sterile, white-walled room. Regardless, she had spent all of her lucid hours in the hospital feeling lost and uncertain about just about everything. This was a refreshing change of pace, even if she had no memories of him prior to waking up with his hand in hers the day before. 

Blue caught his eyes lingering on her smile, and he flushed, his gaze skewing to his bag on the floor before flitting up to her eyes again, an eager smile erupting on his face. “I almost forgot!” He went rummaging through his bag, producing a single yogurt cup and a spoon from what she figured must have been a small insulated lunch box. “I figured you were probably starting to get tired of the hospital food,” he said, frowning as he moved to hand her the yogurt. “Maybe I should help?” He eyed her cast with a worried expression, as if he regretted choosing to bring yogurt after all. 

“I’m not going to have you spoon-feeding me yogurt. I can manage perfectly well on my own.” She rolled her eyes good-naturedly, still incredibly pleased that he’d brought her favorite snack. She reached over with her good arm, fitting the yogurt cup into her other hand before accepting the spoon. “But thank you, this is very sweet of you.” 

“Of course,” Gansey responded, settling his bag back onto the floor. “You probably have another half dozen in the fridge at home. I’m happy to bring you as many as you want until you’re out of here.”

Blue ate a couple spoonfuls of yogurt before she spoke again. As much as she hated being in the hospital, the concept of her doctor discharging her brought up a troubling question. Where exactly would she be discharged to? She did have an apartment of her own, after all, but would she be comfortable staying there if the Gansey-sized hole in her memory persisted? “Tell me about how we met,” Blue prompted, trying not to get bogged down in her own thoughts. 

Gansey’s face twisted into an expression that suggested perhaps it wasn’t the happiest of memories he had of their relationship.

“Was it really that bad?”

“I may have entirely made a fool of myself.” He reached a hand up to scratch at the back of his neck with a grimace. “The phrase ‘awfully smart for a girl’ may have escaped my mouth.”

Blue’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. 

“And then I might have followed that up with ‘Calm down’.” 

“And I still chose to date you after that?” Blue asked, her voice incredulous. At first, Blue had mostly been confused given the fact that her type wasn’t generally boys who wore polo shirts. God-forbid boat shoes. Then she’d found this softer, more subdued Gansey surprisingly charming. Now she was just confused over how they’d gotten to this point. A lot could change in four years. Still, she felt like she had whiplash, and not from the car crash she’d been in. 

“Well, yes, but first you verbally kicked my ass,” Gansey laughed, his facial expression still pinched in a way that made it clear that he wasn’t proud of his past actions. “Ronan likes to joke that I fell in love with you right then and there while you chewed me out for my casual misogyny.”

“So, did you?” Blue teased, enjoying the way another blush rose to his cheeks. She scooped the last bit of yogurt out of the cup, leaving only the strawberry chunks that had settled to the bottom of the plastic container. She pivoted her broken arm towards him. “Your soggy fruit bits, Sir Richard Campbell Gansey III, Esquire,” she announced, grinning at him. Even though her head still hurt, and the whole situation was incredibly frustrating, she still felt at ease enough around Gansey to make jokes with him. 

“Thank you for using my full title,” Gansey laughed, seeming much more at ease himself than he had when he first entered the room. He took the yogurt cup from her hand and happily accepted the spoon. “You-” The smile on his face faltered, and a thoughtful look passed over his face. He tilted his head to the side as he looked up at her, as if she were a mystery he was trying to figure out. “How did you-?” He let out a breathy laugh, looking at her like she had just performed some sort of impossible magic trick. 

“How did I what? Give you the fruit from the bottom of my yogurt?” she asked, baffled. 

“You don’t remember anything about me, right?” Gansey asked, looking far more hopeful than she thought he reasonably should while asking her a question like that one. 

“Yeeees..?” she answered slowly, not at all following his logic. 

“You and I have always shared these things,” he explained, holding up the container in his hand. “You don’t like the fruit in the bottom, but it’s my favorite part. Some part of you must remember that, even if not explicitly.” Blue almost had to look away from his face. The intensity of his excitement made her feel like she was looking directly into the sun. 

She managed a grin that morphed into more of a grimace as her head started to ache again something fierce. Gansey immediately noticed the shift in her expression. “Are you okay?” he asked, reaching out for her hand before thinking better of it and letting his arm drop into his lap. 

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Blue assured him as she closed her eyes in a futile attempt to wait for the pain to pass. “I think I just need more meds. Could you hit the call button?” 

Gansey wasted no time in reaching out and pushing the glowing button in the wall. “Is there anything I can do?” 

Blue reached for her water, making a small noise of discomfort when she leaned forward. And before she could ask, Gansey was already there, pressing the cup into her hand. She took a long drink, passing the cup back to him as one of her nurses entered the room. Gansey slid her overbed table a little closer so that it was more easily within her reach before setting the cup back on it. “You’re probably going to need some rest, huh?” 

Blue nodded as the nurse placed a little cup in her hand that contained two little white pills. “Thank you,” she said, offering him a weak smile. “For the yogurt.” 

He pulled the strap of his bag over one shoulder. “Of course. Get some rest, okay?” 

“Wait, Gansey. I have one more question before you go,” Blue spoke up after downing her painkillers. He looked up at her quizzically. “Do you still think I’m pretty smart ‘for a girl’?” she asked, the smallest of smirks crossing her face. 

“I think you’re brilliant, Blue. Full stop,” he answered, his smile enormous and disarming. 

Blue wondered if she had ever gotten used to that smile in the four years she’d known him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, for some reason my computer doesn't know whether it likes an indentation at the beginning of a paragraph or not. One of these days, I will go through and make everything match. Today is unfortunately not that day.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Blue finally gets in touch with her mother.

A day passed, and then another. The doctors took her for further brain scans. Gansey came and shared another yogurt cup with her. When she was allowed more than one visitor at a time, Adam introduced her to Ronan, and despite the fact that she couldn’t remember any of their former inside jokes, they got on like a house on fire. She still struggled with the enormity of what she had forgotten, but it comforted her to know that she’d found such great friends. Even if she couldn’t fully conceptualize of Gansey as her boyfriend, it was evident that he knew her, and he took her comfort very seriously. He made it seem all so effortless, but Blue noticed. How he always at the first sign she needed rest to spare her the task of asking him to leave. How, after she’d pulled away from his hand that first time she had regained consciousness with him by her side, he hadn’t tried to touch her again even though she knew he longed to. Every time he entered her room, he was poised and polite in a way that she knew was for her own benefit. But his facade was imperfect. Occasionally, it splintered, and Blue could see how much it hurt him. How hard it was to live with the fact that someone he knew and loved and had spent the last few years with didn’t remember him. As much as they were all focused on her recovery, Blue wondered if Gansey had someone taking care of him while she was in the hospital. She wondered if he was taking care of himself. 

Four days into Blue’s hospital stay, the doctors began discussing the possibility of discharging her. She was healing up nicely, and they found the “yogurt incident,” as she’d taken to calling it, promising. They’d also encouraged her to seek out familiar situations in an effort to “prime her brain to remember.” She’d promptly dumped this information into Gansey, Ronan, and Adam’s laps. She herself didn’t have a clue what familiar situations even entailed, and she was too busy worrying about where she would go once she could no longer stay in the liminal space that was this hospital room. Just the day before, Adam had offered up his and Ronan’s place as an alternative to her and Gansey’s apartment if she wasn’t ready for that just yet, but Blue only felt more confused. She didn’t know what she wanted. 

Gansey entered her room that afternoon, immediately grinning at the fact that she was still wearing the sweater he’d given her the day before. He had wordlessly taken it off and handed it to her before she’d even said anything about the temperature of the room. It had smelled familiar and comforting, and she hadn’t wanted to take it off. His expression faltered slightly when he saw the distressed look on her face.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Anything,” he answered immediately, and she knew that he meant it. 

“Is my mom okay?” Blue asked, fear tinging her voice. It had been the better part of a week, and she still hadn’t heard from her mother. She felt so small, dwarfed by the size of the hospital bed and the magnitude of the anxiety gnawing at her. She had been terrified to ask about it. She had the growing suspicion that something terrible had happened without her remembering it. “The hospital hasn’t been able to reach her, and I’m pretty sure my phone must have gotten lost in the crash, and I don’t know what I’ll do if-” She was rambling now, her worry spilling out of her in a messy monologue. 

Gansey’s face went soft, and his hand twitched toward hers before he purposefully set it back in his lap. “It’s alright. She’s alright,” Gansey soothed, hating to see her so distressed. He felt awful that he hadn’t addressed this before Blue had gotten a chance to panic about it. “Persephone is conducting PhD research in Eastern Europe, and she, Calla, and your mother have been backpacking. I’ve been trying to get a hold of her too.”

Blue let out a long breath, her eyes sliding shut for a moment as a look of intense relief fell over her face. Her mother was okay. She was several thousand miles away, but she was okay. It felt wrong that she’d ended up in such a disastrous situation, and she couldn’t ask Maura for advice. 

Gansey’s phone went off. He glanced at his phone, cracking a grin as he wordlessly handed the phone to Blue. Maura Sargent had always had uncanny timing. She stared at him in disbelief for half a second before seizing the phone and pressing it to her ear.

“Mom?” she asked, her voice sounding young and full of emotion. 

“Blue.” Her mother’s voice. Loud and clear, and slightly out of breath. 

Blue struggled to find the words to ask her all of the questions she had. How did she ask her mother to recount the last four years and convince her that she would be fine, all from half a world away? She looked at Gansey, her eyes pleading him not to go anywhere. “I’m hurt, Mom,” she managed. Blue looked like she was going to cry. Gansey offered her his hand, the only thing he could think to do to offer her some small comfort. She took it after a moment’s hesitation, her cast rough against his palm. 

“I know, Blue, I know. I’m trying to change my flight right now.” 

“How much longer were you supposed to be gone?” Blue asked. They’d talked about taking this trip even four years ago if Blue’s limited memory served her right. She felt a stab of guilt at the idea of forcing her mother to cut her trip short.   
“Three weeks. But I might be able to get a flight out tomorrow.”

“Mom, I can’t let you do that.” Blue frowned. 

“Blue, if you need me, I’m coming back home. It’s not even a question,” Maura insisted. A soft shushing sound came from the other end of the line, and Blue thought she heard Persephone’s wispy voice. 

Blue turned her head to look at Gansey, her eyebrows still furrowed together. She thought about how devoted he had been. How he’d come to her room every day since this mess began. How he always did everything in his power to keep her mood up. How he answered every single one of her questions, no matter how stupid they seemed to her as she asked them. How Adam had been completely honest with her even though it couldn’t have been easy. How Ronan had grinned and fist-bumped her cast lightly when he told her how badass the portion they’d shaved away from her head looked. 

“Am I in good hands here?” Blue asked, glancing down at the bright pink of her cast where Gansey’s hand met hers. 

“Are you talking about your boys?” Blue wanted to trust them. More than anything, she wanted to trust Gansey. 

“I’m thinking of one in particular,” Blue told her, eyes going to Gansey’s face again. 

“That boy would do anything for you, Blue,” her mother said, and Blue believed her.

By the time Blue ended the call almost a half an hour later, she felt lighter, like she could breathe a little easier. She looked down at the phone in her hand. Gansey’s lock screen was a photo of her wearing an oversized black hoodie and grinning wildly at the camera. She wanted to remember this. The carefree look on her face as she beamed at him. Turning her head, she found that Gansey had dozed off in his chair, his hand still holding on to hers. 

“Gansey,” she murmured, not wanting to startle him. 

“Hmm…?” His eyes fluttered open, his thumb brushing absently back and forth over her fingers before he looked up and gently released her hand, accepting his phone as she handed it back to him. 

“Thank you,” Blue told him, feeling a bit emotionally drained after the rollercoaster her feelings had been through while talking to her mother. She’d gone from feeling thrilled that her mother was alright to guilty that she might be pulling her away from her trip. Maura had filled her in as best as she could, and Blue was feeling acutely the weight of what she’d lost. 

“Of course. Anything you need.” He sat up a little straighter in his chair. “Is there anything else I can do?” 

“Stay?” she asked, hating how desperate her voice sounded. At this point, she had to face the fact that Gansey’s presence brought her comfort, even if her memory had no context for how safe she felt with him. “I should probably try and sleep, but would you stay until I do?”

He nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue is finally discharged from the hospital. Mild shenanigans ensue.

A truly horrendous cacophony of sounds that Blue refused to call music resounded from the speakers in Ronan’s car. 

“Christ, Ronan,” Adam muttered, “If there’s anything Blue should be allowed to forget in peace, it’s this.”

Ronan grinned at him devilishly in the rearview mirror. 

Blue had finally been discharged from the hospital after almost a week, and the four of them were in good spirits as they headed back to Gansey and Blue’s apartment. The Pig was not fit to drive anyone anywhere in its present state, and realistically neither was Gansey. So the four of them had piled into Ronan’s BMW: Ronan and Gansey in the front and Blue and Adam in the back. 

It had taken a lot of convincing on Blue’s part for Maura Sargent to be assured that Blue would be okay without her mother having to take an international flight back to the states to take care of her. By all accounts, it didn’t make any sense for Maura to come home, as much as it would have comforted Blue to be at home with her. After all, the doctors had all told her that she should seek out experiences familiar to the ones she’d forgotten. Of course, that had been supremely unhelpful at first because she had no way of remembering what exactly constituted “familiar” except by way of trusting the three boys she now shared a car with. She’d come to the conclusion that if she’d really spent the last few years in their company, they were her best bet at remembering. She’d also decided that she could trust them. Although, Ronan’s choice of “music” was challenging that decision. 

“I already have brain damage, Lynch. Are you trying to blow out my eardrums too?”

Gansey glanced up at her in the rearview mirror before fixing his eyes on the road in front of the car, his lips pressed together as he tried--and failed--to hide his laughter.

“You people don’t understand art,” Ronan lamented, punching the buttons of the CD player until it played a different but equally egregious song. 

“The art of creating sounds that by no definition of the word can actually be called music?” Blue asked. 

“See! She gets it!” 

Adam fondly rolled his eyes. 

// 

Blue really hadn’t known what to expect when it came to the apartment. She took pause in the doorway when she first entered, trying not to let her surprise show too much on her face. She was happy that she’d been allowed to leave the hospital, but she wasn’t sure how much she could call this place home. She had no memory of it, but there were traces of her all over: a few of her favorite books on the bookshelf, a purple jacket on the armchair that was very clearly hers, a couple bottles of dark nail polish on the coffee table. She looked up at Gansey just in time to see him drop down his cheerful facade over the mixture of worry and hope that had previously been occupying his expression. 

She hardly had time to process everything before Ronan was shouting at her from the kitchen. “What do you want for dinner? Sargent’s choice. You deserve real food after being subjected to that garbage masquerading as hospital food.” Ronan whipped open the door to the refrigerator. “Although, I am going to go ahead and make the executive decision that we are ordering something in because you two have no food.” 

Gansey gave a sardonic smile. “That was half the reason we decided to go out to dinner when...the other night.” He hadn’t been able to force himself to make a trip to the grocery store while Blue was in the hospital. 

“Is there a takeout place somewhere nearby that I like?” Blue asked, taking a seat at the kitchen table. She figured that if there was any silver lining to losing her memory, it was getting the chance to experience some of her favorite things for the first time all over again. 

“There’s a pizza joint that you suggest every time we order in,” Adam offered, hoisting himself up to sit on the kitchen counter. Ronan immediately moved to lean against his leg. 

“I could go for pizza,” Blue shrugged.

An hour later, the four of them were sat on the floor around the coffee table. 

“I’m sorry. You like what on your pizza?” Blue asked, looking scandalized. 

“Avocado is a perfectly good pizza topping.” Gansey put his hands up in a defensive gesture. 

“Yeah, he somehow managed to find a pizza topping worse than pineapple,” Adam said, taking a bit out of his perfectly normal slice of sausage pizza. Blue felt a little better, knowing that she wasn’t the only sane person in the group. 

“What other dark secrets am I going to discover about you?” She asked, turning the pizza box so that the offensive half of the pizza was as far away from her as possible. 

“That he owns boat shoes?” Adam ventured with a smirk.

Ronan’s face lit up like he’d just been invited to play his favorite game. “Or maybe that nasty hipster shit he drinks?” 

Gansey hurled a throw pillow at him. “It’s called kombucha.” 

Ronan caught it, laughing. “Oh, come on, you don’t want to get pizza sauce on your home decor.”

“I suppose it is called a ‘throw pillow’ for a reason,” Blue pointed out, thoroughly entertained by her boys and their banter. She’d been worried at first that spending time with people she barely remembered would be awkward, but she had found their group dynamic very easy to jump into, even if her brain wouldn’t let her access 99% of their friendship. 

Ronan tossed the pillow her way, and she swatted it out of the air with her cast. “Hey! Not fair, I’ve only got one properly functioning arm,” she protested, picking it up and whipping it back at him with her good arm. 

“Fair enough,” Ronan conceded, turning to Adam to balance the pillow perfectly on top of his head. 

“You’re full of chaos,” Adam told him, swatting at it until it fell backwards onto the couch behind him. 

“Oh, come on. You love it,” Ronan said. 

Adam’s smile betrayed that he did indeed love it. He turned his focus to Blue. “How are you feeling? Head doing okay?”

Blue paused, taking mental stock of her injuries. She felt pretty good for being fresh out of the hospital. “I could probably use a low dose of painkillers for my head, but good other than that.”

Gansey got up immediately and went to the bathroom, retrieving two ibuprofen and a glass of water for her. She thanked him softly and downed the pills. “Better to take care of it now so it doesn’t hurt more later,” he said, giving her a small smile. 

Blue realized that she was no longer able to simply put thinking about Gansey on pause outside of visiting hours. Not that that had been an easy thing to do either. Now, the thought of coming back to this apartment with him, their apartment, and trying to coexist was daunting. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. It was more that she dreaded trying to live up to this version of herself that no longer existed. Even if he was incredibly kind and understanding every time she spoke to him, she had no doubt that some part of him was still longing for her to revert back to the person she was before the accident. It felt like an awful lot of pressure. 

Much to her relief, she discovered that Ronan and Adam had decided to stay the night. She found that she didn’t overthink things as much when the four of them were together as a group rather than when she was one-one-one with Gansey, even if she did enjoy his company. They set up an air mattress on the floor for Adam and Ronan to sleep on, and Gansey intended to sleep on the couch. But when Gansey showed her back to the bedroom to change, she reemerged in her pajamas with a troubled expression.

“I’ve decided I’m sleeping out here with y’all,” she told them, sitting on the couch next to Gansey, who promptly stood up. 

“I’ll get the other air mattress.” He moved straight to a closet near the front door, eager to help in any way that he could. Despite Ronan and Adam’s best efforts, Gansey still felt guilty about this. All of it. If he had done things differently, maybe they wouldn’t be in this position. Maybe Blue wouldn’t be hurt. He dropped it onto the floor and unrolled it before starting the pump. 

Twenty minutes later, they were settling in for the night, Ronan and Adam curled up on one air mattress and Gansey on the other. Blue took up residence on the couch. The bed probably would have been more comfortable, but Blue wasn’t too fond of the idea of waking up in a strange bed in a strange room all alone. She’d already had to ask Gansey which toothbrush belonged to her, which had left her feeling irritable and mildly ashamed. It was something so simple, and yet she still couldn’t remember for the life of her. Yes, she decided, it would be better to sleep out here with the rest of them than to be alone in that room with her thoughts. That was until she heard the sorts of conversations they had once the lights were out. 

“No, I mean, if centaurs have two ribcages, doesn’t that mean they have two hearts?” Ronan pointed out.

“How the fuck did that thought enter your head?” Adam asked from somewhere beside him in the dark. Blue got the impression this wasn’t the first time Adam had been on the receiving end of such chaos from Ronan. 

“In that case, wouldn’t they have two hearts and five stomachs?” Gansey asked after a moment of thought. 

“Five stomachs?” Blue asked, wondering what possible logic Gansey could be following, if there was any logic involved in that thought process at all.

“Because horses have four stomachs.”

“Gansey, that’s cows,” said Adam, exasperated. 

“Okay, but who’s to say some centaurs aren’t part cow? I don’t remember the mythology relegating them to horses. Who’s to say there aren’t bovine centaurs?” Ronan added. Blue could practically hear the shit-eating grin on his face. 

“Ronan, I swear to god I will beat you to death with my cast if you don’t shut up,” Blue threatened, stifling her laughter.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang's adventures in group baking. AKA Blue is still recovering and we're trying to keep things light for her sake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize that it's been so long since I last updated! In that time, I've written like 20 pages worth of content, so look forward to more regular updates going forward!

By the time Blue woke up, she could smell coffee and cinnamon. She’d slept like the dead despite her unfamiliar surroundings. She put it down to exhaustion and the fact that the couch was heaps more comfortable than the hospital bed she’d spent the better part of the last week in. She took a moment to appreciate she and Gansey’s collective taste for cozy interior design. She opened her eyes to see the boys gathered in the kitchen, Gansey reaching up to rub away the condensation that his coffee had produced on his glasses while Ronan swiped a stripe of frosting onto Adam’s nose with a devious grin. 

She sat up, grateful that she at least remembered where she was and who these people were. Gansey noticed her stirring after he’d wrangled his glasses back onto his face. He gave her a gracious smile. “I trust you slept well.” The shadows beneath his eyes betrayed that he likely hadnt, but still, he managed a cheery demeanor. “We’re making cinnamon rolls,” he offered in explanation when her eyes flicked to the frosting on Adam’s face. 

“Cinnamon roll,” Ronan corrected, scooping up the pan and carrying it to the coffee table along with a handful of forks. 

“Someone didn’t put enough flour in, and now they’re a bit too soupy to eat individually,” Adam explained, handing her a fork. Gansey still stood in the kitchen, fiddling with the electric kettle. Adam sat down and enthusiastically took a bite of their mildly gelatinous creation, more in an attempt to prove to Blue that they were edible rather than a healthy gusto for their home cooking. 

Blue’s eyes lingered on Gansey’s tall frame in the kitchen a few moments more before she cautiously endeavored to scoop some of their culinary creation out of the pan. She watched as little rivulets of frosting melted into the shallow indentation her fork had made and raised an eyebrow at Ronan and Adam sitting across from her. “If this kills me, I’m haunting you for the rest of your lives.”

“Promise?” Ronan asked, a grin cutting across his face. Adam elbowed him lightly in the ribs as Blue lifted the fork to her mouth. Her face went through a complicated series of expressions as she was at first shocked by the texture before realizing that it actually did taste quite good once you got past its level of soupiness. 

“B+,” Blue decided. “Overall pretty good, but there’s a reason soup isn’t breakfast food.”

“Cereal,” Ronan countered, taking a bite of his ungodly creation. 

“Excuse me?”

“Noodles in broth. Cereal in milk. It’s not all that different.”

Gansey joined them in the living room, setting a mug of tea in front of Blue as he sat down. “You know she can’t haunt you if you all eat it and succumb.”

“She can haunt you, then,” Ronan said, clearly unbothered by the strange texture. He was carving out quite the canyon in his corner of the pan. 

Gansey’s face slid briefly into a pained, grief-stricken state before sorting itself out again into the amicable expression he’d been wearing previously. It was a moment that was meant to be missed, and Blue felt strangely guilty for having caught it. She thanked him for the tea. Their interactions since Blue had left the hospital had all had a strange air of formality to them. Gansey knew that Blue probably felt some level of discomfort at coming home to a place she had no memory of with a person she had very little memory of, and Blue knew that it couldn’t be easy for Gansey to know that he was essentially a complete stranger to the person he’d shared his life with for the last few years. The uncertainty of how things would play out once Adam and Ronan left left both of them feeling uneasy. 

“You’re very welcome,” he told Blue, “Do you need any more painkillers?” he asked. He knew he was toeing a fine line here. He knew how much Blue liked her independence, and he knew that he could be overbearing at times, but he figured that the special circumstances of the situation superseded all else here. 

Blue took a few seconds to think it over. In all likelihood, she could probably get up and sort it out herself, but her head was starting to throb again, and she still felt rather tired even though she’d slept clear through the night. Plus, the child-proof cap of the bottle had turned out to be a real pain in the ass to deal with while her arm was in a cast. She nodded. “Yeah, that would be great actually.” 

Gansey stood again, snatching up a fork from the coffee table and scooping out some cinnamon roll from the pan in one fluid motion. “And no one is haunting me, thank you very much. I’m capable of making the same stupid decisions as the rest of you,” he grinned, pointing his fork at Ronan before taking a bite. “And I agree with Blue. They still taste good, but soup, of the cinnamon roll variety or otherwise, should be enjoyed in non-breakfast settings.”

“You wound me,” Ronan muttered, although his expression seemed to say More for me! 

Gansey returned and dropped two little white pills into Blue’s palm. She downed them both with her tea. As he sat down beside her again, she got another good look at the shadows beneath his brown eyes. He had nice eyes, she decided, she didn’t like seeing them look so exhausted. 

“Are you doing okay? You look like you didn’t get much sleep.” Blue was nothing if not blunt. 

Gansey gave her another one of his smiles. It was a smile that won elections and reassured you that everything would be okay. And it was covering something up. “I’m just a bit of an insomniac is all. No need to worry.” The truth was that his insomnia hadn’t been this bad in years. In fact, he’d forgotten how bad it could be. When they’d first started dating, his insomnia had become much more manageable. When they’d started living together, he’d formed a regular sleep schedule for the first time in years.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! Have a bit of fluff!

Blue got a better idea of Gansey’s insomnia when Ronan and Adam finally made their departure and she made it her mission to get reacquainted with the apartment, which she pegged as a much less daunting task than reacquainting herself with Gansey. Baby steps. 

She stumbled across the first one when she went to brush her teeth for the day and found that Gansey had stuck a Post-It note to her toothbrush. His handwriting was small and neat, and she could easily imagine it scrawled in the margins of a textbook or written on index cards meant for a speech. It read:

Reminder: this one’s yours. 

Blue cracked a smile, plucking the note off of her toothbrush. She pressed it to the mirror, smoothing her thumb along the adhesive strip so that it would stay. It struck her as a very Gansey thing to do. She brushed her teeth and went out into the kitchen. Gansey had holed himself up at his desk for the better part of an hour, and she had a feeling he had done it to give her some space to explore the apartment. She appreciated him for it. 

She appreciated him even more when she started finding more notes all over the apartment. There were two in the fridge. 

One on the box of yogurt cups: The peach ones are your favorite. 

Another on the glass bottles in the door: My “nasty hipster shit.” Wouldn’t recommend. You once told me it tastes like a vaguely tangerine flavored public toilet. 

Blue snickered and yanked a peach yogurt out of the box. She had to try a few drawers before she found a spoon and settled onto the couch with her legs curled up under her. She found the couch delightful. It was a mid-century modern piece with pale blue tufted fabric, and it looked like it should have been nowhere near as comfortable to sleep on as it had been. Fanciful, yet sensible. She smirked. She was about halfway through her yogurt cup when her eyes caught a flurry of pastel squares on the bookshelf. She unfurled herself from the couch to investigate. 

The bookshelf was a strange conglomerate of Blue and Gansey’s interests. Most of them she could identify as belonging to one or the other. Unless her interests had shifted dramatically during the strange lapse in her memory, she made the assumption that all of the tomes on Welsh history and dead languages and Medieval weaponry belonged to Gansey. Some of the volumes had evidently gone out of print a long time ago she thought as she trailed her fingers down the spine of a book that looked like it might fall out of its linen cover if she took it off the shelf. The books on Amazonian biodiversity and what looked to be biographies of several badass women seemed more her speed. She swicked a pale blue square off of a paperback novel on one of the lower shelves. 

You’ve told me a couple times that you wish you could wipe this book from your brain so you could read it for the first time all over again. Do what you will with this information. 

Another: I think I remember you hurling this one at the wall??? 

A third that made her smile. I read this one to you last year when you had the flu. You fell asleep halfway through something like four different chapters, claiming that my reading voice was “too soothing.” In the corner, he’d left a little doodle of Blue asleep with her head atop a large book. Something in her chest burned with the desire to know Gansey again. She staggered to her feet and went into the kitchen, rifling through the drawers again until she found what must have been the junk drawer. They’d had more than one in her home back in Virginia. One with conventional junk drawer items: twist ties, various sizes of batteries, an odd pair of scissors. The other had contained odds and ends of an entirely different sort: half-melted pillar candles, shards of cherry bark, satchels of this or that herb. She’d once found a vial of dirt in said drawer. Now, she was just looking for a Post-It note and a sharpie. 

She waited until she heard him get up to use the bathroom before slipping down the hallway and leaving her yogurt cup on his desk. It only contained the slimy slices of peach that had settled to the bottom of the container, and it sported a single yellow Post-It note: You dont have to hide back here all day. And beside it, a crude rendition of him enjoying the dregs of the yogurt with an expression of shut-eyed contentment on his face.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue and Gansey come to an agreement.

Gansey emerged from the hallway, yogurt cup and spoon in hand, and sat himself down on the couch in a way that struck Blue as far too formal for his own home. “How are you feeling?” he asked, poking at the peaches in the bottom of the cup with the spoon before taking a bite. His eyes were back on her in a second, mentally assessing whether something could have gone wrong in the hour he’d tucked himself tidily behind his desk.

“I’m fine, Gansey,” Blue told him. Ever since they’d come back to the apartment, he’d started just about every one of their conversations by asking if she felt alright, and she wanted to stop feeling like there was something wrong with her. Of course, the reasonable part of her knew that everyone’s concern was warranted, but a second, more selfish part of her wanted everyone to treat her like she hadn’t just been in a life-altering car accident. She frowned and hugged her knees to her chest. Blue chewed at her lower lip, frustrated that she’d snapped at him. After all, she’d been the one to invite him out here. Maybe on top of giving her some space, he’d also been sheltering himself from her frustration. 

She sighed. 

“I’m sorry. I just...I don’t know how to feel, and it’s stressing me out. I do appreciate your concern.” She settled her chin atop her knees. “How are you doing?” It seemed best to steer the conversation away from her for a bit while she stewed, and she was genuinely concerned for him. 

He let out a soft huff of laughter, and looked distractedly to the side like something just outside the window had caught his attention. Blue studied his face. He was doing that thing again. The thing where his face wasn’t really his face. Not his real one anyway. 

“You don’t have to worry about me, Jane.” It wasn’t really an answer. 

Blue bristled at the name. “Jane?” Her eyebrows knitted themselves together in consternation. She’d just reined in all of her unsightly feelings, and here they were, roaring out of her again. “Who is Jane?” 

Gansey threw his hands up in front of him, warding off against attack. Although, it wasn’t very likely the yogurt cup would protect him. It wasn’t the first time Blue had blown up at him. It wasn’t even the first time she’d blown up at him over this particular nickname. It had simply been so long since this had been a contentious point between him, that he’d more or less forgotten that Blue had ever objected to being called Jane. 

“You,” Gansey explained. “Jane is you...or rather, you’re Jane. I-” He shook his head, closing his eyes as he attempted to conjure up the right words. He set down the yogurt container and formed his fingers into a peak before pressing them to his mouth. He’d learned years ago that his words never led anywhere good when too hastily formed. “This is another one of those stories that doesn’t put me in the best of lights. Not long after we first met, I told you that Blue was a very unique name, and...well, I started calling you Jane, and I think you merely tolerated it for awhile, but...This is a long-winded way of saying I’ve been fondly calling you Jane for quite a long time.”

Blue’s anger slowly melted off her face, and the tension released itself from her shoulders, though she seemed troubled. “That doesn’t sound like a particularly sound basis for a relationship.” 

“Oh no, our relationship isn’t entirely based on me making an ass of myself, I promise,” Gansey told her. “Although I suppose I really haven’t made a very strong case for myself.”

Blue agreed with him entirely. If he didn’t have her mother’s commendation, she likely wouldn’t have felt comfortable enough to come back to this apartment with him. That, and some part of her still felt very safe with him. Things were awkward, sure, but she hadn’t doubted his good intentions for even a second. 

“So tell me about the good things,” Blue prompted, reconfiguring her position on the couch so that she was more comfortable. She looked up at him with her head resting on her good arm. 

Gansey knew an olive branch when he saw one. He retrieved his peaches and relaxed back into his seat. “Well, I suppose I could tell you about our first real successful date,” Gansey offered, an easy smile forming on his face as he thought back to it. 

“Your phrasing implies the existence of other, less real and slash or less successful dates.”

“Indeed it does. However, you wanted me to tell you stories that won’t make me look like an ass,” Gansey told her, grinning as he finished off the peaches. “That very date is actually where we established our long-standing tradition of eating outrageous amounts of this stuff.” 

“How romantic.”

“Oh, just wait until I tell you about how I finally convinced you that I am ‘tolerable to be around,’ the height of romance,” Gansey said, a sarcastic smile edging onto his face. 

Blue could almost imagine the scene. Sat across from Gansey. Spoon dangling from her hand. A sardonic grin on her face, not unlike the one Gansey wore now. Her sarcasm just a bit too over the top to avoid revealing just how much she was enjoying herself. She stared down at her cast, picking at the spot where her thumb protruded from it. “Well, now I’m curious. Rarely do I give anyone such high praise,” she countered, her grin only half hidden by the tilt of her head. 

“Well, at first, Ronan and Adam thought it would be funny to torment us by bringing us along on a double date of sorts.”

Blue snorted. 

“I see you’ve divined about how well that went.” He let out a short breath, half a laugh, and glanced down at the yogurt cup as if it would bestow upon him the ability to tell this story and accurately get the feeling of it across. “We did our flat best to avoid each other after that: me because I was embarrassed about making myself look like an idiot so many times in front of you, and you because I’m fairly certain you were steaming at me for aforementioned making myself look like an idiot. This, however, worked very poorly, as we both got out of class at the exact same time across the hall from each other three days a week.”

Blue appraised his expression, enjoying how fond he seemed to be recalling this particular memory. Enjoying even more that the press of his lips indicated he still felt mildly embarrassed over it all. 

“So, you caught me after class and asked me out?” Blue guessed. She got the impression that Gansey possessed a level of confidence that would allow him to ask her out even after the amount of times he’d pissed her off. 

“Actually, I dumped a cold brew down the front of your shirt in February.”

Blue made a sound of indignation, offended on behalf of her past self. Her shift in posture demanded an explanation. 

“I had realized that I was running late to an appointment, and I rushed out of the building….and straight into you.” 

The picture was still crystal clear in his head: Blue stood in front of him, all five foot nothing of her, shoulders drawn up on either side of her neck, gasping cold air into her lungs as she splayed her palms forward, as if it would prevent her from being splashed in the first place. Her fingers curling into fists while she sucked in another deep breath, processing what had just happened. Her livid expression as she looked up at him and practically growled, “You!” It had been maybe 40 degrees, and although she had been wearing a forest green hat, she had come to class without a jacket, just a long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of velvety looking pink pants. Gansey had wanted to disappear down a manhole. 

“You know, I’m really failing to see how this story leads to the two of us actually ending up a couple,” Blue commented, sporting a bemused grin. 

“Well, it was really a couple of weeks after the fact that we could properly have been called a couple,” Gansey explained. “I gave you my sweater, so you wouldn’t have to freeze on your walk back across campus. I also gave you my number, for easier sweater returning purposes. And then I convinced you to let me buy you lunch as an apology for the unexpected coffee shower I inflicted on you.” 

“And I was into you, just like that?” Blue’s voice was skeptical. 

“Well, let’s just say you grew to tolerate me enough that we made a habit of getting lunch after class once a week and debating about something that was in the news that day or discussing our thoughts on mutual professors we’d had.” He smiled warmly. “It was the best part of my week.”

“Pshaw,” Blue said, red rising in her cheeks. She couldn’t handle how fond Gansey’s eyes were as they settled on her. It was strange feeling so known when Gansey remained a bit of a mystery to her. “So, I’m assuming eventually I moved past the “merely tolerating” you phase?” 

Gansey let out a soft huff of breath and dropped his eyes to the floor. The smile was still present on his face, but it had acquired a sad slant. “Yeah, something like that.” 

“Well,” Blue said, concern needling at her. The slope of his otherwise perfectly postured shoulders only served to expose how heavily this all weighed on him. A perfectly despondent contrapposto. “I have an idea. Any chance you’d like to hear it?” He struck her as the sort of person who operated best with a plan. Concrete steps to follow rather than struggling vaguely towards the ultimate goal: Fix My Girlfriend’s Busted Hippocampus. 

Gansey nodded, needing something to tether him to reality so that he wasn’t washed out into the sea of his grief. “That would be nice.”

“We do the last four years all over again.”

Gansey’s eyebrows dipped into a V shape. He didn’t understand. This was precisely what he wished to avoid. He didn’t want to start all over with Blue. He wanted to coax her memory into recounting the inside jokes, their idiosyncrasies, their routines. Of course, he would do whatever it took to help Blue make sense of things, however, it seemed awfully reductive to start back at square one without at least trying to recover something more.   
“I mean, we make a list of significant things we did over the last few years and do them again,” Blue explained further. Her plan wasn’t terribly sophisticated, but she felt it was reasonable. Either way, it seemed like a more viable option than awkwardly tiptoeing around one another in the apartment. “My doctor did say that putting myself in familiar situations might aid in memory recall.” 

This clearly piqued Gansey’s interest. “As in, reenacting portions of our relationship?” he asked, his brain already whirring into action. If he could use his memories to help recover hers, he would do it in a heartbeat. 

“More or less. I think it’s less about acting things out and more about recreating the circumstances. Like, going to a place we’ve been on lots of dates to, doing the same activities, talking about the same sorts of things.” This was where she really required Gansey’s help. He would need to supply the prospective list of activities to be completed. 

“I’m certainly willing to try,” he told her, grateful to have something productive to keep his mind busy when he couldn’t sleep or when he felt like he was suffocating under all of his anxieties. There was quite a bit of overlap here. 

“I do have a few rules,” Blue added, fingers tapping on the outside of her cast. 

“I’m all ears.”

“Number one.” She pointed a finger emphatically in the air. “You will not, under any circumstances, pour cold brew on me. Nor any other liquid substance.” 

“Although I do think that was a formative moment in our relationship, the memory of which could be very much aided by a full sensory experience…” He sighed loudly for full dramatic effect, grinning at her as he did so, “I concede to you on that point. I promise not to pour anything on you.”

Blue found herself easily returning his grin. “Number two.” A second finger joined the first. “If I’m uncomfortable at any point, we can go home or take a break.”

“Always.” His sincerity felt tangible. His eyes on her were heavy, like it pained him to think she didn’t trust that he always valued her safety and comfort above all else. 

“Third, you can’t kiss me.”   
Gansey still looked a little sad even as he nodded. “Of course, Blue. I don’t want to do anything to make you uncomfortable.”

“I just...if we’re recreating dates we’ve been on...I’m not ready for that,” she explained, wanting to set boundaries now so that they didn’t end up in awkward territory later. She knew he wouldn’t push anything on her. If she could tell anything from him right away, it was that he was respectful. Still, she felt like she owed it to him to delineate some boundaries. 

“I can do that,” he promised her. “Any other rules?”

“Those are the big three.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, offering her his left hand with a broad grin, all business. It was really all for her benefit. A handshake didn’t involve any more intimacy than he’d share with anyone else. 

Blue took it without hesitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I really want to tell all of you reading how much I appreciate you! And to those of you who leave comments/kudos, please know that you leave me smiling for the entire day. <3


End file.
